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From the Associate:
A Normal Life
It had been a long and interesting conversation. We had gotten onto questions of belief, and as I had described the Christian life of discipleship, the beauty of it began to catch my new friend, and his questions became eager and excited. Then came an abrupt change. His eyes grew troubled, and he pulled back, almost physically, and said, "Listen, that's all very nice, but I just want to live a normal life."
I understood his sudden reserve. He was beginning to get an inkling of the change that following Christ would mean, and he recoiled from the possibility of seeming strange or out of step. It got me thinking: What really is normal? Who gets to decide this? Is normal what people on TV always do, or what my family has always believed, or the way folks from my town always think about things, or the way my chosen set of friends happen to dress? Is it just a matter of convention, an arbitrary thing that differs from place to place? We wear suits, you wear grass skirts; we eat burgers, you eat fried grasshoppers; no matter, whatever seems normal to you, go for it.
Christians have an answer to this question about normality. There is such a thing as "normal life," life as it is supposed to be. It is the life of heaven. The way things are done in heaven is the normal way to do them; the way people talk, act, eat, live, whatever, in heaven is the right and good and normal way to go. The further people wander from this true center, the more "eccentric" they become. The closer they are to this heavenly pattern, the more normal they are. God's home is the real fount of fashion.
We don't know how they do everything in heaven (the language spoken there is, of course, Italian) but we do know some things. This is because God, in healing our abnormally sinful world, has shown us glimpses of heavenly life, first by the revelation of the Old Testament (God to Moses: "Be sure you do everything according to the heavenly pattern shown you on the mountain") and then, magnificently, by sending us his Son, the man from heaven. Jesus is the fully normal human, and the saints, those who approach him most in love and character and way of life, are the closest to normal. The rest of us are abnormal in varying degrees, making our way towards true health and fullness and, boring word for a thrilling reality, normality.
This is what Vatican II meant by saying that Jesus Christ reveals humanity to itself. When we see Christ, we see ourselves as we are meant to be, as we will, by God's grace, one day be. He is the standard, the norm, the only truly "regular guy." And the day is coming when all "abnormality" will finally be banished forever. We call this the Second Coming of Christ. Heaven's life invading and conquering earth once and for all.
With this in mind I might have said to my friend, "Don't be concerned. Follow Christ closely, and that is exactly what you will do: live a normal life."
Fr. Michael Keating
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